It's not about the weekends only. As the young gun cycling season is in progress, we get more and more weekday events, especially short stage races, like those that just got underway in France (Tour du Loir-et-Cher and Rhône Alpes Isère Tour) and Spain (Cinturón Mallorca and Tour of Castellón), whose early legs we are reporting on in this round-up. Plus, the past few days featured the second round of the six-stop UCI U23 Nations Cup in France, with plenty of English-speakers in the saddle but a talented winner from Slovenia, whom we might even find up against the pros quite soon, who knows …

The Slovenian prospect Simon Spilak, born in the year 1986, displayed more of his skills as he won Round Two of the UCI U23 Nations Cup (formerly World Cup Espoirs) in France this past Wednesday. A dozen days past the Series opener in Portugal, many top-quality young guns were back in the saddle at the Côte Picarde, a demanding challenge of 179 kilometres with a pancake flat first half, but also the Plessiel (km 96.5), Miannay (km 112), Quesnoy-le-Montant (km 115) and Friaucourt (km 131) ascents coming before the race hit the final circuit, at its turn featuring the Blengues and Bellevue climbs (race map and profile available here – pdf file).

The race saw a winning breakaway group of eleven riders make the headlines, also thanks to a massive pile-up that involved much of the main peloton about 5km from the finish and made all chasing efforts pointless. Spilak and his compatriot Kristjan Koren made the gap alongside nine more riders, one of whom was Britain's Ben Swift. Also Rik Fransen (Hol), Beñat Intxausti (Spa), Hyun-Wook Joo (Sko), Mateusz Komar (Pol), Kristoffer Nielsen (Den) and the talented Gatis Smukulis (Lat), usually wearing the Velo Club La Pomme Marseille jersey, were into the right breakaway, that featured two members from the host country: Blel Kadri and Romain Villa.

France and Slovenia were outnumbering all other nations, but whereas the home riders proved unable to take advantage of it, Spilak broke away solo and got the most out of his abilities as rouleur (the boy finished in the top ten spots at the U23 ITT both at the Madrid and Salzburg World Championships) to hold off the rest of the front group and cross the line eleven seconds clear of Hyun-Wook Joo and Nielsen, with Kadri taking fourth place only; Swift finished in seventh a couple more seconds adrift. Slovenia also seized power in the nations ranking, with Portugal - homeland of round one winner Victor Rodrigues - and France in the other top three spots.

A solid English-speaking contingent took part in the race, with riders from Britain (Ian Stannard finished fourth in the main bunch sprint and 20th overall, Andrew Tennant snatched 43rd place), Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and the US National Development team, but as you can see in the complete results below none of them made the top ten. The Italians were even less of a factor, with 63rd place getter Ermanno Capelli as top finisher (so to speak) and their best-known athlete Francesco Ginanni in the top places only if we turn the classification upside down. The UCI Nations Cup gets back soon, with the U23 Liege-Bastogne-Liege going in Belgium this next Saturday.

The UCI 2.2-sanctioned Tour du Loir-et-Cher, whose 48th edition runs over four stages and as many days not far from Paris, kicked off Wednesday with 119 riders from several French and foreign teams in attendance, and with a 163 kilometre opener from Blois to Billy, that came down to a bunch sprint and saw the young Alain Lauener (Team Fidibc.com) of Switzerland take the spoils for the first time this year - and capture also the first yellow jersey - from the Belgian fastman Jurgen Roelandts (Davitamon-Win for Life) and Denmark's Morten Reckweg (Team GLS). French riders were a bit disappointing again, as their top finisher Yvan Sartis couldn't place higher than eighth.

The stage got off to a fast start, with the Cercle Gambetta Orléans and Glud & Marstrand Horsens boys setting a high pace that kept any wannabe attackers from making the gap for real, such that no moves could put over 40 seconds into the field. Not even a group of thirteen that launched their attack as the race hit the final circuit could go far, and a last try coming from Nikolas Cotret (CG Orléans) didn't lead to a better outcome.

Stage two of the contest, from Marchenoir to Lamotte-Beuvron over 204.5 km, was held in excellent (but perhaps a bit too windy) weather conditions Thursday. The earlier moves came from Franck Bigaud (Fra - CG Orléans) first, and a group featuring Jérémy Léonard (Fra - Blois-CAC41), Matej Stare (Slo - Perutnina), Roy Hegreberg (Nor - Sparebanken Vest), Jurgen Roelandts (Bel - Davitamon), Jonathan Mouchel (Fra - AVC Aixois) and Fabio Angeli (FidiBC.com), a domestique of race leader Alain Leuner, later. But all riders above, as much as a few more wannabe escapees, were hauled back by the field, driven by the Swiss chasing machines of Team FidiBC.com, and the same thing occurred to late attackers Jacob Nielsen (Den - Glud & Marstrand Horsens) and Sébastien Boire (Fra - RO Saint-Amandoise).

It looked like everything was ready for a(nother) massive sprint, but five guys did not agree and broke away with just a few kilometres to go. Tomas Buchacek (Cze - PSK Whirlpool), Radoslav Rogina (Slo - Perutnina) and the Frenchmen Sylvain Georges (Blois-CAC41) and Pierre Cazaux (Entente Sud-Gascogne) managed to hold off the hard-chasing bunch by a mere two seconds. That proved enough of a gap for Tomas Buchacek to take the small bunch battle over line honours as Sylvain Georges started his sprint with 200m to go and the Czech came around him. Wednesday's winner Alain Lauener of Switzerland led the peloton charge to the line – the bunch had reeled in just Morten Hegreberg (Sparebanken Vest) – and held onto the overall leader's mantle, despite hitting the tarmac earlier in the stage. But Tomas Buchacek is just one second down on the GC now.

The Swedish cyclist Hakan Nilsson, racing for the Luxembourg-based Continental Team Differdange, won Thursday's opening leg of the 17th Rhône Alpes Isère Tour, just another short stage race currently going in France with the young guns up against some professional riders. The 118-km. journey from La Verpillière to Charvieu-Chavagneux saw the Scandinavian, born in the year 1980, claim his first victory of the season as he was the toughest in a bunch sprint of seventeen, pipping Michael Reihs (Team Designa Kokken) and better-known Frenchman Nicolas Vogondy (Agritubel) to the line, with Matthew Brammeier of Wales riding to an excellent fourth place finish. Nilsson's best accomplishment of the 2007 cycling year prior to this victory was a top five result at GP Nogent-sur-Oise on Easter Sunday.

The other short stage race that began Wednesday was the 42nd Cinturón Ciclista Internacional a Mallorca, a five-day event going in the main island of the Balearics. The young gun version of the Mallorca Challenge held about two months ago saw 143 cyclists from as many as 25 teams – ten of which from Germany, but with hundreds of thousands of people from Deutschland picking the island as their number one vacation spot, and someone even referring to Mallorca as "Germany’s seventeenth federal state", this wasn't much of a surprise - at the start line. Also the Recyling.co.uk squad is competing.

The race opener was not the old-fashioned prologue in downtown Palma de Mallorca, but a ride of 154.2 km with the start/finish line at Maria de la Salut town. It was a fast paced (average speed: about 43 kph) and hotly-disputed stage, with attacks going since the flag was dropped and breaking the field into pieces despite the relative easiness of the course. In the end it was the former professional rider Bram Schmitz (CT Van Vliet-EBH Advocaten) of the Netherlands that came across the line first, winning a three-man battle over Germans Andreas Schillinger (Team Sparkasse) and Matthias Frieedeman (Lamonta), thus getting an early gift for his 30th birthday coming this next Monday. The trio broke away about ten kilometres from the finish. The top Spanish finisher, Juan José Abril, came in fourth at five seconds, while Tom Diggle of Britain finished a superb tenth on the stage.

After the first and longest stage of the race the Cinturón resumed with a tough journey – that sunny and hot weather conditions did not make easier at all - of 131.6 kilometres from and into Port de Pollença (of Challenge Balears pro race fame) with the finish line on the local seafront, and two giant climbs on this menu: the second Category Coll de Sóller and the first category ascent of Puig Major. Thursday's fast (the average speed was slightly under 40 kph) ride saw the German contingent finally rise to power in "Germany’s seventeenth federal state" as the 19-year-old Marcel Fischer (Team Brandeburg) won the sprint of a first bunch of 39 riders and the professional cyclist Andreas Schillinger (Team Sparkasse), obviously finishing inside such leading group, stormed to the top of the leaderboard as he toppled Holland's Bram Schitz.

Fischer said that he was vying for a stage at Mallorca, and was truly glad that he managed to get one. It was no easy ride for him, especially on the Puig Major slopes, but he realized he had good legs all through the stage, and eventually made the most out of his excellent condition, also moving up into seventh overall and capturing the U23s leader jersey. His compatriot Schillinger, not new to tasting victory champagne in Balearic races, came to the island with the intention to aim for overall victory, but thinks that Sunday's last and difficult ride to Castell de Bellver will be the race decider.

The presumed "queen stage" of the Cinturón lived up to expectations, with attacks going off the front since the early kilometres. No more than seven miles into the stage a group of twenty riders from as many as fourteen squads went away. The Coll de Sóller slopes split that breakaway apart, and at the same time started to give Bram Schmitz a hard time. The day went from bad to worse for the former wearer of TVM and T-Mobile jerseys as he hit the next climb, Puig Major, where he just lost all of his hopes to stay atop the GC (he was going to cross the line in 70th place, over 18 minutes behind the winner), while the battle amongst the top teams was breaking out for real.

Then a five-strong front group was formed, containing also two riders of the Extremadura-Spiuk team: Pedro Romero and Jesús Ramírez. But chase efforts from the mighty Germans on the descent bore fruit, and the small breakaway turned a bigger peloton with thirty-nine members, double world champion Chris Newton as well as Ryan Bonser of the British team Recycling.co.uk and the Dane Glenn Bak racing for the Sean Kelly team included. But also there was Herr Fischer, who had the quickest legs in the final rush to the line, situated in front of a restaurant well-known to the local cycling community, and kept Jesús Ramírez and the whole Spanish peloton from taking their first 2007 Cinturón finish.

The most recent addition to the list of short stage races involving the young prospects of the bunch these days was the 2.12.2-ranked Volta a la Província de Castellón, an event going in the northernmost side of the Valencian region of Spain. Thursday's race opener into the hamlet of Vall d’Uixó, with the finish line situated on the Corazón de Jesús avenue, was won by Fabien Fraissignes of the Guidon Sprinter Club Blagnacais team, who at the same time clinched the first overall leader's jersey.

The Frenchman beat on-form Jordi Berenguer (Universidad Politécnica Valencia-Bancaja) in a close sprint finish. The guys made it to the line as they got into the right breakaway, that formed after lots of previous moves - going since the very early portion of such hotly-disputed stage - were nullified, and eventually dropped all other fugitives about 3 km. from the finish. The first chase group, led home by Juan Luciano ahead of the Russian Vladimir Shchekunov and Spain's Rafael Valls of the mighty Comunidad Valenciana-CCN, came in at 01'18", while the reigning champion Samuel Soto (Cosaor-Costa del Azahar) immediately lost all of his chances of a successful defence of his title as he finished 04 minutes and 18 seconds behind the winning pair.